of harmonious beauty and lyrical pathos to a stanza

like the following:

Que fers de lansa
mays no m'acora;
que mi transfora
lo cor el cors
l'enveios mors

e verenos

coma poyzos

dels vilas motz,

quem fan jos votz

per maestria.

The verse of six syllables has been used by Bernard de Ventadorn for the stanza of one of his best canzos, where it occurs alternately with accen greu and agut:

De domnas m'es vejaire
que gran falhimen fan ;
per so quar no son gaire
amat li fin aman.

However well suited in this case to the sentimental purposes of the troubadour, this verse is hardly fit to be used by itself in longer stanzas. There is a certain entre deux' about it, which deprives it of the graceful ease of shorter metres, without giving as an equivalent the grandeur of, for instance, the decasyllabic line. Its effect is much finer where it occurs combined with other verses in a stanza, as, for instance, in another poem of Bernard de Ventadorn, where it is found in connection with the verse of eight syllables, both showing accen greu :

Tant ai mon cor plen de joja

tot me desnatura;

flors blanca vermelh'e bloja

m sembla la freidura.

This is at the same time one of the few examples where the octosyllabic verse is used in lyrical Provençal poetry. Dante, in consequence of its rarity, does not even mention it. But it is nevertheless of great importance, being the favourite metre of the romance. The two most important Provençal romances, Flamenca' and the 'Roman de Giaufre,' are written in it, as is also a novelette by Raimon Vidal, the author of a Provençal grammar. The first lines exhibit him as a 'laudator temporis acti,' after the manner of the later troubadours:

·

En aquel temps c'om era jais

e per amor fis e verais
cuendes e d'avinen escuelh.

The octosyllabic verse with accen agut is more often found in lyrics than that with accen greu. poetry both occur promiscuously.

In epic

Of all the different verses the most important both in lyrical and in epical poetry, in Italian, French, and Provençal, is the endecasyllabus, or verse of ten syllables. The variety of different forms in which it occurs, and of purposes for which it is used, make a short account of its origin and development almost necessary. This variety is effected by the manifold ways in which the cæsura, one of the few relics of ancient metrical art, is used. The 'Leys d'Amors' says 'E devetz saber que en aitals bordos la pauza es la pauza en la quarta syllaba; e ges no deu hom transmudar lo compas del bordo, so es que la pausa sia de vi. syllabas el remanen de quatre, quar non ha bella cazensa.' The pauza here spoken

of is the cæsura, effected by a stronger accent being given to a certain syllable of the verse, and by a short rest which the voice naturally takes afterwards. This rest or pause may also be filled up by a short unaccentuated syllable which is not counted. In this case the pauza is feminine, or with accen greu : otherwise it has accen agut. As has been seen, the 'Leys d'Amors' lays down that the cæsura must be after the fourth syllable; and this indeed is the rule in lyrical poetry, from which that work takes all its examples. But the endecasyllabus occurs in much older documents in the langue d'oc and langue d'oil, namely, in the old popular epic; and to this it is necessary to refer in order to give a full account of its development. The oldest poetic monument in the Provençal language is a fragment of what seems a long didactic poem, and is commonly called 'Boethius,' because the parts of it which remain treat of an episode in the life of that author. Boethius, we may here recapitulate, a Coms de Roma, and one of the wisest and most religious men of his age, has been thrown into prison, on a false pretence, by his enemy the Pagan emperor Teirix. In his misery, Philosophy, the heroine of Boethius's work 'De Consolatione Philosophiæ,' comes to comfort him. She appears to him under the form of a beautiful maiden, the daughter of a mighty king. In the hem of her raiment are wrought the Greek characters II and as symbols of 'la vita qui enter es' and 'la dreita lei.' In the middle of this description the manuscript breaks off, and leaves no indication of what was to

follow. The time of this interesting document is, as
Diez has shown by linguistic reasons, not later than
about 960; and its great age adds to its value for
metrical purposes.
The metre is essentially the same
as in all French poems of the Charlemagne cycle, viz.,
the decasyllabic; and it is used in very nearly the
same way. In both languages it was the rule to give
the fourth syllable of each verse the strongest metrical
accent, and thus to effect after this syllable the cæsura
or 'pauza de bordo' which has been explained above.
Boethius' has only verses con accen agut; and there-
fore to avoid monotony most of the pauzas are with
accen greu, so that generally each line has eleven
syllables, e.g.:

Nos jove ómne | quandiu que nos estam
de gran follía | per folledat parllam.

The following lines afford examples of the masculine

cæsura:

E qui nos pais | que no murem de fam
cui tan amet | Torquator Mallios.

In a few cases, the second part of the verse contained one syllable less than usual, generally after a feminine pauza, which, as it were, covered this want, for instance:

donz fo Boécis | corps ag bo e pro.

In these cases it might almost be supposed that the cæsura had been left out by neglect. But this supposition is disproved by the fact that also after a pauza con accen agut the second half of the verse is shortened in the same manner, a phenomenon which can be ex

plained only from the effect of the interval after the accent on the fourth syllable. An instance of this is the line:

Qu'el era cóms | molt onraz e rix.

Here the verse consists of only nine syllables. The metre in Boethius' could therefore vary from nine to ten or eleven syllables. This variety was even greater in other poems, where the feminine rhyme occurs together with the feminine pauza, so as to bring the length of the verse to twelve syllables, e.g. : En autra térra irai penre linhatge.

This

The hiatus in the cæsura, as is evident from this and many other examples, was not considered a fault; and the first vowel was certainly pronounced. seems to mark the transition to the more modern French heroic verse, the Alexandrine, which was not used in the old chanson de geste. In epic poetry also the position of the cæsura after the fourth syllable is almost universal. But there are some exceptions to this rule. In Girartz de Rossilhon,' the most important popular epic of the langue d'oc, the pauza del bordo occurs always after the sixth syllable, e.g.: Vecvòs per miei l'estorn | lo vilh Draugo

lo paire don Girárt | l'oncle Folco,

or with feminine pauza and masculine ending of the

verse:

Tan vos vei entrels vostres | queus an cobrit,

or with both feminine:

E fan lor cavals córre | per la varena.

The same form of the decasyllabic verse is also found

Y